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| Groovy Girl rolling out the dough |
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Personal style!
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 Cutting the hearts
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| Frosted Hearts |
28 Days of Things I Love; #10
baking with my girl
Tag: love
28 Days of Things I Love; #8
I love what I do every day. I love to help students find the perfect book choice. I love to ask students if they finished the chapter book they are turning in only to be treated to a childish glare that says “of course, I did-I loved it, where’s the next one in the series.” I love to have my kid’s book clubs make remarkable discoveries as they read something like Laurie Halse Anderson’s Fever, 1793. I had one group this week put together a slide show about yellow fever and the book. It was impressive stuff and secretly it felt good to know that their tech skills came from a library lesson. I love connecting a teacher to a book for a literacy lesson and hearing later that it went great.
As the roles of librarians emerge and change we have a wide array of duties that fit in our hats. We feel, at times, out of place. We can learn a lot from teacher’s collaborative meetings but rarely get the opportunity to go. As our district buys into reading plans we don’t feel needed in a meeting about reading. Our role is ever more crucial to guide students into independent thinking, decision-making, and to nurture life-long readers. It is a struggle to get administrators at the highest level to understand it is much greater and as simple as picking a book. Long live librarians!
28 Days of Things I Love; #7
#7 I love my new refrigerator!
It came today. The trucking dude left it in our driveway, leaving my husband to maneuver it up and into the house. It is not hooked up yet but I’m thrilled to own this new beauty. I’ll be able to get a glass of cold water from the front door. It has a mini-wine rack inside the door. The freezer is ample for ice cream and organic chickens. It is magnetic so we will feel free to junk it up with gaudy magnets and frayed photos! The Sub-Zero that came with the house was not magnetic. Is it not sparkly and beautiful?
Happy Days!
28 Days of Things I Love; #6
(Groovy Girl in a rare meditative moment)
Ohhh. Been busy. Love my life; not always happy with the chaos that comes with our hectic life.
So today I say I love calm. I need to embrace it and bring it forth more each day. My day at school is class after class and when I have a lot of student-led projects happening I end up working through my lunch to get supplies sorted and ready. After busy work days I am grateful to come home and peacefully make dinner, enjoying my time with children.
This week though I’ve yet to make a real dinner at home. Amy’s mac and cheese and some vegetables on a plate do not count for a family meal but that is what I left my children with as I pulled down the driveway headed to my daughter’s school conference and then to an art class I’m taking. Last night was similar as Groovy Girl had a make-up skating lesson and I helped at a school fundraiser right after. Two activities each night is exhaustive to my mind and spirit. How do you deal with your hectic schedules?
Breathe. Peace. Calm is what I love.
28 Days of Things I love; #1
image courtesy of vintagechica
#1 On the first day of February I offer up my children’s sunshine-filled peaceful moments.
I deeply love my children all the time but I am very nearly giddy when they get along, showing mutual respect and kindness for each other (not the terms they would use.) This morning in the bathroom was an example of this or when Teenage Boy helps Groovy Girl with her homework. There are many more times when he is big brother mean to her and she sobs little girl sobs and maybe those times make me appreciate the camaraderie that can occur. Life is rocky-I hope they can learn to count on each other.
Happy February!
Simply Monday
We made chocolate chip cookies at our house tonight. Groovy Girl and I owed Teenage Boy a batch because he walked her and two friends over to the cemetery on Saturday at dusk. We live across from a cemetery and this is a favorite “challenge” activity when friends sleep over. He remembers doing this when he was in middle school with a group of his friends. To thank him for following through we made him the cookies. He’s been eating them while he watches football and reads Inheritance, last in his favorite Eragon series..
I just made the recipe on the back of the Nestle package (yes, every once in awhile non-organic lands in my grocery cart-I don’t know how?) because it was there and easy. I know I have several good recipes but I’ve never hit on one that was so amazing that I have to make that one ALL the time, they all seem to be pretty similar. Do you have a favorite chocolate chip recipe? If so, please share.
My kitchen’s not clean but the cookies are done. Dinner was easy. My kids are happy. Groovy Girl and I had a serious conversation about an article in her Discovery Girls magazine. About bras. Ugh. She’s worried because other girls in her class have started wearing them. Double ugh.
When I went up to get her headed toward sleep she was dancing wildly to one of her Taylor Swift CD’s, lucky for her she was already in her pajamas with her teeth brushed. We read the last half of The Snow Queen by Amy Ehrlich and talked for a few minutes. She wanted to share one of Taylor’s songs with me. It’s a sweet song and it made us hug repeatedly. Listen to it; Never Grow Up, not an official video but still a good.
Hoping your Monday was peaceful and simple.
Patricia Polacco's In Our Mother's House-A Celebration of Love
Published in 2009, this book is a perfect showcase of how any set of parents, be they male or female, gay, lesbian or straight can bring love to children. As a teacher I see children who need and crave that exact unconditional love good parents can provide-so many children are missing out on what joy a real family can bring. Patricia Polocco is one of my favorite authors and I’ve written before how easily she can make me tear up. This book not only makes me teary (I had to stop reading at one point and my Groovy Girl took over reading, patted my hand and said ‘it’s okay, mama’:) but it brings a very timely message to the table.
This is what the end note has to say: ” Polacco has met many children with parents just like Marmee and Meema. She saw a true need for books that celebrate these children’s wonderful, yet untraditional, families, and created this heart-warming story in their honor.”
The book begins: “When my mothers told me about how they brought me home to live with them shortly after I was born, their eyes would shine and glisten and they’d grin from ear to ear. They told me how they had walked across dry hot deserts, sailed through turbulent seas, flew over tall mountains and trekked through fierce storms just to bring me home.”
I count several sets of same-sex parents as friends (is that like saying I have lots of friends who are black?) and all provide such happy, unconditional love to their children. I wish Iowa had not ousted our judges who chose to uphold the law thus providing same-sex couples with the right to marry as U.S. citizens. I consider this the civil rights fight of our time. When will we see that love is just love and worthy of celebration. This book shares the life of one couple, two mama’s and the three children they raise together= a happy family and I’m glad Patricia Polacco made the choice to write about this controversial topic.
Find the synopsis here at Patricia’s website.
Mary Ann reviews it at Great Kid Books.
and the Children’s Book Guide talks about it too.
Linger by maggie stiefvater
What a beautiful cover, holding together a breath-taking story. I read it quickly over the course of one weekend, snuggled in my bed. Now I have to wait a long time for Forever to arrive-it will seem, well, like forever!
Good Reads Synopsis:
In Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver, Grace and Sam found each other. Now, in Linger, they must fight to be together. For Grace, this means defying her parents and keeping a very dangerous secret about her own well-being. For Sam, this means grappling with his werewolf past . . . and figuring out a way to survive into the future. Add into the mix a new wolf named Cole, whose own past has the potential to destroy the whole pack. And Isabelle, who already lost her brother to the wolves . . . and is nonetheless drawn to Cole.
My thoughts:
I had no idea what Stiefvater had planned for Grace and Sam in this second installment but I hoped it wasn’t just lovey stuff. It wasn’t and in fact the direction it took was so perfect because it involved Grace’s parents, who were never around much in Shiver. Her parents, in classic parental form, decide to ban Sam from her life, which doesn’t work. Never does. All of this could be quite cheesy love stuff but in Stiefvater’s hands it is brilliantly written. Extremely poetic and one chapter leads to another and another until you’ve devoured it all.
The story, like Shiver, is told in alternating point-of-view between Grace, Sam, Cole and Isabelle, changing sometimes right in the middle of a chapter and this worked really well. I despised Cole’s character and fell more in love with Isabelle, making their attraction an interesting combination. Grace and Sam weathered their storms, but not easily and I’m now quite anxious to read Forever, #3 in The Wolves of Mercy Falls. As a former Minnesotan I can relate to the setting and think she’s portrayed the cold, the seasons and the landscape so well. If you haven’t picked up this series yet-I highly recommend it, even if your not from Minnesota.
Random Quote: ” Later, I thought of the things I could have added to the list of resolutions, things I’d wanted back before I realized what being a wolf meant for my future. Things like Write a novel and Find a band and Get a degree in obscure poetry in translation and Travel the world. It felt indulgent and fanciful to be considering those things now after reminding myself for so long that they were impossible.” (27-Sam)
Other reviews:
See Michelle Read reviews it and has some good points.
Read Presenting Lenore’s review.
Beets, Beautiful Beets!
Beets are a favorite root vegetable here at this house. I know this is rare. I have other friends, even farmer’s market-type friends, who turn up their noses at the lovely beet. The beet is nice and simple. I roast them with their skins on, olive oil drizzled, just enough so they don’t stick to the Corning Ware dish. The outer skin just rubs right off except you are trying to get it off while they are steamy hot! Once I get them peeled I sprinkle with some sea salt and serve them piping hot. Sometimes a small dollop of sour cream adds to the eating experience. We’ve been eating them frequently as they were easy to find at our last remaining markets. Beets and Jitterbug Perfume go hand-in-hand. I started rereading Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins this week for my fourth book in the 451 Challenge, which finishes up at the end of November-I’m in a bit of a book-reading crunch as I have to catch up by two books (The Everafter and A Curse Dark as Gold) for my long distance book club and have to read My Abandonment by Peter Rock for my other book club. I hope to get all four of these books done before Thanksgiving.
This book has been one of my favorites since I read it the first time in my early twenties. I’ve read most of Tom Robbins books and his other’s are good but this one takes the cake or well, the beet! It is a love story that transcends the normal confines of time and place. It entertwines several lives, including a few mythical characters, from New Orleans, Seattle and Paris and they all come together over perfume, immortality and beets. Yes, beets.
From the beginning:
The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.
and another three paragraphs about the wonderul characteristics of beets!
The beet is unusual for sure and Robbins’ choice of this blood red veggie adds much charm as the beet is a character in this novel as much as any other.
Are you a lover of the lusty beet?
Have you read any Tom Robbins?
This post is connected to Weekend Cooking hosted by Beth Fish Reads.
Here’s a great post about the nutritional value of beets at The Lunch Box Bunch.
My Dad
I’m not a fan of Father’s Day because I miss celebrating it with my Dad. What’s a hallmark holiday without the person? I do celebrate that I had such a great dad and that really he was always there for me. Even when I was mad at him for a few years he still welcomed me. Even when I made bad choices he grinned and loved me anyway. The bad choice list is long (tattoos, long-haired boyfriends, lack of studying…) he still opened his arms and hugged me. I’m glad I spent many years after my teens and twenties fully appreciating him and his love for me. So in celebration of Father’s Day I’ll share my dad (Roger)with you.
Ten Facts about my Dad:
1. He was a writer and worked most of his life in the newspaper business.
2. His parents came from Russia just before WW II.
3. He wasn’t afraid to cry and often did as he aged, especially when talking about his 4 children.
4. He always told me I was his favorite daughter; I have 3 brothers! He loved this joke.
5. He was a good photographer.
6. He once severed a finger working in a factory; he asked them to sew it back on as he wouldn’t be able to type.
7. He was a computer geek from way back and he ended up loving his Apple.
8. He smiled and laughed a lot.
9. He loved holidays especially Christmas. He had a game he liked to play involving gift-giving and it had a set of rules!
10. Boating was his favorite leisure time activity. He loved Minnesota lakes and took us on many water adventures.
I miss him immensely but am so very thankful for the time we did have. My peaceful girl doesn’t have clear recollections of her grandfather except through photos (he was the first one to feed her Newman’s ice cream) but she loves to say “I sure miss Grandpa Roger, don’t you mom?” She usually says this as she rocks in his family’s old rocker.I’m happy my other two children do have great memories and that my husband and my dad had a fantastic bond.
Happy Father’s Day Dad! Love you and miss you!
(and as usually dad, I need help; new tires and your extra $100.00 you always seemed to save for me and I have so much to share with you…)
The photo is a late 1950’s publicity photo. Someday I will share a newer photo but doesn’t he look stylish!
Peaceful Reader 